REMAINS IN PANAMA MAY BE MISSING WOMAN

San Diego 
Forensic specialists in Panama are working to determine if human remains found this week on a small Panamanian island are those of missing Dana Point woman Yvonne Baldelli, whose ex-boyfriend from Vista is under indictment in connection with her death.

The FBI has offered to send agents to the island, Isla Carenero, and help Panamanian authorities with the identification, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Conover in San Diego. He confirmed that a green, military-style backpack was found Tuesday afternoon and that it contained a human skull and several bones.

The bag was found in a swamp-like area on the same small island where Baldelli was last seen in November 2011, Conover said. Results of forensic DNA tests could take several weeks.

“We don’t want to get our hopes up too much,” Baldelli’s youngest sister, Michelle Faust, said Thursday about the discovery.

“My sister and father had the foresight to leave their DNA with authorities when they went down (to Panama),” Faust added.

Two FBI agents who operate in the area are in contact with Panamanian authorities to provide assistance, said San Diego FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth. The FBI’s evidence response team members in San Diego are also on standby if they are needed for additional crime- scene processing if the remains are determined to be linked to the case, he said.

Baldelli’s ex-boyfriend, Brian Brimager, was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego in June and charged with obstruction of justice and making a false statement to a federal agent in connection with her death. The 37-year-old former Marine is in federal jail in downtown San Diego and has pleaded not guilty.

The indictment said he killed Baldelli and then staged an elaborate cover-up to trick family, friends and investigators. While he is not charged with murder here, Panamanian authorities have been investigating her death and could charge him with murder there.

The discovery of a body would help speed up their investigation.

A farmworker clearing brush with a machete on Isla Carenero, a small island in the Bocas del Toro province on Panama’s Caribbean coast, found the backpack. He opened it and saw a human skull, according to a report in the Panamanian newspaper Critica.

Baldelli and Brimager were living together on the island, having moved there a few months before. The indictment said that witnesses reported the two had loud fights. At the same time, Brimager began emailing another woman, the mother of his young daughter, talking about plans to move back to California and raise their child, the indictment says.

Brimager embarked on an elaborate cover-up, sending fake emails from Baldelli’s laptop to her friends and family that said she was “having a great time” in Costa Rica and had hooked up with another man, the indictment says.

He also withdrew money from her bank accounts and got rid of her dog, a King Charles spaniel, the indictment says.

He returned to the U.S. and within weeks married his current wife in December 2011. Baldelli’s family reported her missing a month later.

The FBI interviewed Brimager, and he is charged with lying to them by saying, among other things, that Baldelli had moved to Costa Rica and was not planning to return to the U.S.